About Life More Abundantly

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

8:50 p.m. Okay, I hear you. Let’s talk more about life More Abundantly

You should note that it came to you in context of our suggestion that your engineers’ group consider how to balance between 3D and non-3D.

How to move our center of gravity, I believe you said. And yes, when I thought that I thought of Dave, who consistently focuses on Life More Abundantly more than anyone else.

Including you.

Really? Perhaps so.

It is a defining stream for him. Each of you has or may have such an identifying stream.

May have?

Let’s say, may recognize. For, by your individual makeup, one or another angle of approach will seem natural, productive, almost ordained for you.

All right, and Life More Abundantly is Dave’s?

We do not mean to imply that there can be only one such stream for any given person. But yes, certainly this is one for him – and, by extension, for his smaller group and the larger group.

So what did you want to be saying about it?

We reiterate, this has nothing to do with acquisition of goods or honors or even satisfactions, certainly not of honors or power or even influence upon kindred souls. It is not about prospering in 3D. Yet – because you are living in 3D, it is about your thriving in your life. Only, what is “thriving” in this context, and what is :life”?

I can feel what we have been unable to figure out how to say. I don’t know why it should be so slippery.

Subtle shifts can be harder to define than large course-corrections. You have often experienced this.

Oh yes. I get accused of pedantry when I am merely seeking greater precision of thought and expression. An odd problem for a wordsmith who is far more intuitive than sensory.

The problem inheres in perception. Those accustomed to broad sweeping terms and fields of vision may find it hard to control their impatience when asked to distinguish fine shades of color one from another. So, with that warning, that we could hardly make more explicit, let’s look to the subject of what we really mean by Life More Abundantly.

For some reason I am reminded of the quote attributed to Dzongsan Khyentse Rimpoche: “If we could not be bought by praise or defeated by criticism, we would have incredible strength. We would be extraordinarily free.”

That is directly on point, you see.

I sort of see.

Life is about you. You are your life. Your world centers on you, rightly. We have said this many times. It is true for each, which modifies the effect in practice, but for now consider only this half of the truth, because it is the key.

Is this what Gurdjieff meant when he said there are two forms of considering others, one of them illegitimate?

Let’s leave him out of it. Those interested in him will pursue it. Others will find it a distraction. But yes, that is what he meant. To consider the existence and interests and rights of others is certainly legitimate, lest you become an anti-social monster. But to consider the imperatives set up by social or even other individual expectations is to betray your own obligation to the life you are there to lead.

Damn it, I can feel it, but we haven’t yet clearly said it.

Patience. It is this. Following the still small voice means staying on the beam. It means not losing your soul and gaining the whole world. It means holding to the pearl of great price.

It means clinging to the real and letting the false go.

Yes, and means saving your life even if you must lose it. It means invulnerability to accident and crime and tragedy – regardless what happens. It means not only “all paths are good” but, more, “Anything you do, anything that happens to you, is good provided that you do not sell the good and buy the false.”

Be what we were created to be.

If your life contains illness or poverty or obscurity, if it reeks of futility, even of desperation, do you have reason to complain? Do you have reason to think there was a slip-up somewhere? Or does it not make more sense to think “This is exactly what I need, because life always gives me what I need”?

An attitude of gratitude

Creates a space for grace.

Well, it’s true. So think of Life More Abundantly as what happens as you cease to kick against the walls, and learn to not only trust fate but live in gratitude that face can be trusted.

The good sisters always insisted that faith was a gift, and I can see their point. If you don’t have it, you can only hope to get it. I don’t know any way

Oh certainly you do.

A way to come to it? Live “as if,” I suppose.

Certainly. Live in faith that faith is warranted, and see what happens. It sounds a little circular, but in practice it works out.

So to put it into words, we should live intending life more abundantly, living in faith that what we sincerely desire will be provided.

And that is all that is necessary. But many will find it all but impossible, do you see why?

They put their ego-level consciousness as judge of what they can and cannot trust, I suppose.

It requires a certain courage to go your own way in the face of public opinion. Think how much greater courage it requires to go your own way in the face of those strands within you who doubt, or deny, or mock. Yet this life is your life. It is for you to choose, and no one else.

Seems to me the more we go into it, the more I return to these or those words of Jesus. In this case, his saying what father, asked for bread, will give his child a stone? In other words, it is not only rational to have faith, it is sort of stupid to expect anything but benevolence.

For some, this will be axiomatic. Others will see everyday life contradicting it. And this brings us back to the nub of it. What you judge by will determine how you see the world, how you see your chances, how you see your life.

Thanks for this. I’m not sure we succeeded in saying what almost can’t be said, but we gave it a good try, anyway.

Words are sparks, remember. This is not a game of logic-chopping. If people leave this page with an image of the pure flame within them, that will be what they need. Nobody is or ever could be an orphan in the universe. Nor a scapegoat. Nor a sacrifice. Nor “unlucky.” Forget about judging by appearance. Your world centers on you, and what is your choice among paths is always available. Incidents do not matter in the sense of throwing you off the rails; they couldn’t. incidents may seem to derail a life; only the person within that life knows the reality, and that “person” is not to be defined as 3D ego-level self alone. Everyone is far greater than that.

Again, thanks.